Clinical

  • State- temporary element of personality

  • Trait- consistent element of personality

  • Free association- Give someone a prompt and they speak off of that prompt; based on free-flowing thought you can determine things based on their personality

  • Self-concept- Your perception of yourself

  • Individualism- Trusting and acting on feelings of being true to yourself

  • Person-situation controversy- Who is more important when it comes to understanding someone? The person or the situation that they are in

  • Short term- situation matters more

  • Long term- person matters more

  • Narcissism- Inflated sense of importance; people with this trait have a tendency to manipulate or exploit others



Pseudo Psychology


  • Physiognomy- Your physical shape says things about your personality

  • Phrenology- You feel someones skull and based on if there is a bump or divot it tells you different things about their personality

  • Four humors- Depending on the proportion of these humors (fluid in body-blood phlegm, yellow bile, black bile) people had different personalities


Freud’s ideas


  • Conscious experience- what you are aware of

  • Unconscious- stuff buried deep within you; dark and evil aspects of humanity

  • Preconscious- stuff we aren’t currently aware of but we could become aware of

  • Conscious- What you are currently aware of

  • Id- devil on your shoulder; only cares about what you want and how to get what you want (ex. newborns)

  • Ego- aspect of you that is interacting with the world; “middle part”

  • Superego- angel on your shoulder; overly focused on morals and what is right vs what is wrong

Freud’s Psychosexual


  • Focus on the Id and depending on how the child resolves that focus it can effect their personality 


  • Oral- eating and soothing themselves

  • 0-18 months

  • Anal- potty training

  • 18-36 months

  • Phallic- child becomes aware of their genitals and the differences between the sexes

  • 3-6 years

  • Etical complex- child wants to kill his father and have sex with his mother

  • Electra comlplex- female child wants to kill her mother and have sex with her father

  • Latency- focus on creating same sex peers

  • 6-puberty

  • Genital- resolving sexual desires with romantic relationships

  • Puberty-onward



Freud’s defense mechanisms


  • Ways to protect the ego


  • Regression: where you are retreating to an earlier psychosexual stage to protect the ego

  • Denial: we refuse to accept the threat to our ego or pretend it doesn’t exist

  • Projection: disguising threatening impulses by saying it is how someone else feels

  • Displacement: take out negative feelings about oneself on an external source; ex. Leah using Gabby as a punching bag

  • Reaction formation: acknowledging how you feel isn’t appropriate so you swing to the opposite end of the spectrum  

  • Rationalization: come up with excuses for behavior that are more socially acceptable





Freud’s ideas


  • Development- Development happened and it got stagnant; stuck in specific phases of development

  • Wrong about stuck in stages, being able to process things as a baby, and the time period ginger identities seems to present

  • Dream- dreams are a way our brain is processing different thoughts, experiences, and exposures during our typical days; about understanding our consciousness

  • Defense mechanisms- about protecting our biases and self esteems rather than our ego and unconscious

  • Repression- can take a traumatic event and bury it deep down into our unconscious where it still impacts you but you are unaware of it (88% of college students believed in oppression)

  • Falsifiability- Freud created a theory impossible to test. (based on the unconscious; since we are unaware it is impossible to approach it from a scientific perspective) 

  • Trajectory- most of Freud’s theories are designed to explain something after the fact; does not allow us to predict future behavior really

  • Sexist- believed women were immoral and men could only have morality



Jung analytic theory


  • Unconscious

  • Personal- material or information that is not in your consciousness (due to forgetting or repression)

  • Collective- ancestral conscious memories that have been passed down through lineage

  • Ancestral memory archetype- elements of collective unconscious that are common to everyone 

  • Anima (man)/animus (woman): emotionally charged patterns of thought

  • Shadow: sex, death, destruction concepts, but different from Freud

  • Persona: how we present ourselves to the world (provides protection to true inner self)






Big Five


  1. Openness- how willing you are to try new things

  2. Conscientiousness- how much you adhere to rules or social norms (larger frontal lobes with higher conscientiousness) 

  3. Extroversion- how much you are able to interact with others for a long period of time

  4. Agreeableness- how much you get along with someone in a social situation

  5. Neuroticism- nervousness and anxiety (neural connections that make stress more visceral in highly neurotic people)

  • Can be remembered by OCEAN or CANOE


  • Stability- as you age you grow more conscientious, more agreeable, and less neurotic. Personality remains relatively stable

  • Brain structure- those high in extraversion have generally low levels of brain arousal

  • Birth order- older siblings are more likely to be more conscious (no correlation in reality)

  • Culture- traits that are present in every culture; how strong they present depends on the culture

  • Prediction- high in conscientiousness and agreeableness are generally able to receive a higher level of success in the workplace


Other theories


  • Roger’s person-centered theory- 3 things that are critical for positive personal growth

  • Acceptance: accept the person as a person of value and worth

  • Genuiness: must respond openly, honestly, and spontaneously to the person

  • Empathy: share and mirror another's thoughts in order to create a place for potential change

  • Eysenick’s dimensional theory- rather than have 5 unique individual traits we can plot neuroticism and intro/extroversion on a matrix

  • Allport’s trait types- identified 4500 words in the English language that could be identified as personality traits (18000 words now)

  • Cardinal traits- rules and behaviors on how you approach situations that you care about; likely to be shown in any given situation 

  • Central traits- traits found in virtually every person; central to being a human

  • Secondary traits- traits that are very context specific; only likely to be seen in specific contexts

  • Biological- genetics and gene expression are important for these traits; personality is encoded in your genes

  • Evolutionary- traits are important for survival and reproducing

  • Genes- personality is in genes, but environmental factors can effect personalies (identical twins have different personalities)



Assessment


  • Projective tests: where you give someone a stimuli and you ask them to build a story related to that stimuli (commonly used in kids)

  • Thematic apperception test (TAT): given a picture and asked to create a story form the picture 

  • Human figure drawings: have someone draw a person and look at what they did or didn’t include

  • Personality inventories: very long questionnaires that cover a large number of traits and situations

  • Minnesota multiphasic personality inventory (MMPI)- developed to examine and help identify emotional disorders (original had 10 different scales, now there are 13) 

  • Myers-Briggs: based on the anscestral archaeotype; failed the validity, reliability test

  • Social media- perceptions of you that you share with others; can be used to understand personality

  • Youyou, Kosinski & Stillwell: using likes and friends on Facebook is more predictive of the big 5 than most of the people close to them

  • Comorbidity- 2 psychological disorders at the same time (depression & anxiety generally go hand in hand)

  • Lifetime prevalence rate- the likelihood of any given person to develop a psychological disorder in their lifetime (65 - 75 %)

  • Etiology- apparent cause and developmental history of a disorder

  • Epidemiology- the study of the distribution of a disorder in a given population

  • Insanity defense- not a psychological term (legal term); at the time of the commission of a crime the person was unable to tell either the effects of their actions or the difference between good and bad actions

  • Violence rates- a myth that people with a psychological disorder are more likely to be violent; 3-5% of violent crime is attributed to people with psychological disorders (10x more likely to be the victim of a crime with a psychological disorder)


Abnormal behavior


  • Deviance- how different behavior is to the typical person

  • Maladaptive- how much does this behavior interfere with their ability to lead their normal life

  • Personal distress- how much distress is a person feeling relating to this behavior

  • Value judgements- what is personally distressing to one person may not be personally distressing to another person

  • Symptoms: used to get a diagnostic

  • DSM (diagnostic and statistic manual)- if symptoms are in the book it is a psychological disorder

  • Current edition- DSM 5; organized by a spectrum

  • How it works- each disorder has symptoms and you have to exhibit a certain numbr of symptoms for a certain period of time







Neuro-developmental disorder- disorders that are prominent and devlop in childhood 


  • Intellectual disabilities- IQ falls two standard deviaitons below the mean; difficulty going about daily lives

  • Learning disorders- dyslexia and dysgraphia

  • ADHD- diffculty focusing or attention for periods of time; high amount of energy (symptoms present prior to the age of 12; girls tend to be underdiagnosed)

  • Autism spectrum disorder- issues with sociality



Deppressive disorders


  • Major depressive disorder- a high level of depresssion that last for an extended period of time

  • 7% of the population in any given area would meet the criteria for a diagnosis

  • Seasonal affective disorder- depression at different times of the year; subtype of depressive disorder 

  • Persistant depressive disorder- depression that is long lasting but not as severe as major depressive disorder

  • Age of onset- generally already had a depressive episode prior to the age of 40

  • Recurrence- most people who have depression will have between 5 and 6 episodes of depression across their lifetime that last usually 6 months to potentially a year

  • Anhedonia- inability to feel joy

  • Sleep- sleep disruption or inadequate level of sleep

  • Helplessness theory- a thought pattern that traps you in your depression

  • Internal- it’s my fault

  • Stable- always going to be my fault 

  • Global- everything is my fault 

  • Depressive realism- people who are depressed are more realistic about the world than those who aren’t depressed

  • Depressed brains- less activity shown in depressed brains



Bipolar disorders


  • 2.8% of population at a given time meet the critera 

  • Mania- tons of energy, don’t need to sleep, really impulsive and uncontrollable

  • DIGFAST: distractability, indiscretion (no good judgement), grandiosity, flight of ideas (move from topic to topic quickly), activity increase (really productive), sleeplessness, talkativeness

  • Bipolar I: high highs and low lows

  • Bipolar II: Some mania but not as extreme; low lows

  • Cyclothymia: not as high and not as low, but still have elements that affect everyday life  

  • Creativity: correlation with creativity and bipolar

Bipolar Disorders:

Heritability - If family members are bipolar, you are more likely to be bipolar

 

Anxiety:

Involves

  • Strong negative emotions - Fear, disgust, grief, panic

  • Physical Apprehension - Feel afraid of something physiologically (heart race, breathing thickens)

  • Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) - Anxiety is not tied to a specific trigger, general feeling of dread or that something is going to go wrong

Body Dysmorphic Disorder - An unrealistic perception of your physical flaws

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) - Can affect anyone who has had a traumatic experience, has a singular cause

  • Hypervigilance - Being very aware of surroundings

  • Memory of event intrusively coming up

  • Smaller hippocampus

Disordered Cognitions

  • Misinterpreting harmless situations as harmful situations

  • Focusing on perceive threats, overfocus on events and things that don’t matter

  • Selective Recall - Remember instances that suggest it is a harmful situation and not recall instances that suggest it is a harmless situation

Origins

  • Learning - If you have a parent that has an anxiety disorder, it is easy for the child to pick up on the same anxious traits

  • Anterior Cingulate Cortex - Part of the brain that monitors behaviors, check for errors in your behaviors

  • Genetic - If a family member has anxiety disorder, there is a higher likelihood that you could develop anxiety disorder

  • GABA - People with anxiety have a deficiency in this

  • 19% - 1 in 5 people are likely to experience an anxiety disorder at some point in their lifetime

 

Phobias: Anxiety is tied to a specific trigger, experience anxiety response when there is no actual threat

Acrophobia - Fear of heights

Claustrophobia - Fear of small or contained spaces

Brontophobia - Fear of storms, fear of thunder/lightening

Hydrophobia - Fear of water

 

OCD:

2 parts to OCD

Aware that they are irrational
Obsessions - Internal cognitions that the individual doesn’t have control over

Compulsions - Behavioral responses to those obsessions

 

Schizophrenia: "Split Mind", error in perception of reality

Happens to only about 1% of the population

Hallucinations - Having a sense experience without external stimuli

  • Mostly auditory hallucinations

  • Delusions - Holding a false belief or exaggeration that is distant from reality

  • Catatonia - Where someone gets into a physical position that seems it would be really uncomfortable and then they maintain that position for an extended period of time

Types: Separated in acute and chronic disorders

  • Acute - Someone who was a typical person develops extreme schizophrenia in a short period of time, easier to treat, episodes tend to be shorter

  • Chronic - Slow development of schizophrenic symptoms, more difficult to treat, episodes tend to be longer

Genetics - Seems to be partially driven by genetic component

Dopamine - Letting out too much, using an antagonist helps treat this

 

Personality Disorders: Disorders relating to personalities

Clusters - 3 different groups

Odd - Eccentric - People tend to feel very different from others and find difficulty in relating to others

  • Schizoid - Lack of interest in forming relationships, no emotional response

Dramatic Emotional/Erratic - Very impulsive and attention seeking behaviors

  • Borderline - Hard time regulating emotions, maintaining relationships, have an inconsistent self-image (98% women, 2% in men)

  • Antisocial - More likely to be diagnosed in men, tend to have very little care in social norms or expectations, quick temper

Anxious-Fearful - High level of anxiety and restricting behavior to deal with that anxiety

  • Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder - Tend to be very rigid in their pattern and rituals, obsession component is typically missing, don’t think that their behaviors are irrational

 

Somatic Disorders: Relating to bodily awareness and illness

Illness Anxiety Disorder - Have a preoccupation with illness symptoms, and behaviorally you are going to constantly be checking for those symptoms

Factitious Disorder - Someone enjoys the attention they get when they are sick so in order to get that they fake being sick

Factitious Disorder Imposed on Another - Rather than liking the attention for being in the sick role, you like the attention you get in the nurse role, so you make someone else sick

 

Dissociative Disorders: Disorders marked by extreme issues with memory or identity

DID - Dissociative Identity Disorder, multiple personality disorder, patient says they have many personalities living within themselves

Dissociative Amnesia - Someone is going to forget important details about a specific event, usually a traumatic event

Dissociative Fugue - Occur when a person becomes confused about their identity and they end up traveling to a new place with no idea how they got there